


Memento

by thedevilchicken



Category: Dogma (1999)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Implied Slash, M/M, Pre-Movie(s), Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-23
Updated: 2005-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-06 23:19:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not just another Christmas in Wisconsin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memento

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 23 December 2005.

Each year, sometime around December 1st, Loki throws what is by now a thoroughly predictable though by no means half-hearted little hissy-fit and demands that they have a "traditional" Christmas. Bartleby says no each and every time without fail, just like clockwork, and subjects him to a perfectly obscene number of lectures on the "true meaning of Christmas," the irony of which being that they're both of them well aware that he's essentially talking out of his ass because equally, they're both of them well aware of its _true_ true meaning. Besides, they've watched the precise definition of "traditional" change every couple of decades or so since before either of them can remember and with calendar shifts (that Bartleby's explained a million times and Loki's never quite got), socio-political tomfoolery and associated levels of religious crapola, all of Christendom might as well be celebrating the birth of Mooby for all it really matters.

Still, Bartleby only keeps up the refusals for the first week or so and in the end they both know he's going to grudgingly agree. He will because he's done exactly that for the past seventy-eight years running, since the last time he told Loki to go fuck himself - his tone so flat that Loki actually didn't see fit to make his usually obligatory snide remark about his lack of capacity for the actual performance of said obscenity - and spend Christmas with the fucking neighbours if it was really that fucking important to him. Seventy-eight years of this long-suffering eventual concession and Loki still treats it as some sort of major victory, gloating for the next week amidst the flurry of tacky-ass decorations he's been hauling around Wisconsin each time they've moved since the fifties. He's been adding to the collection year by year until, by this point, he has enough to plaster the whole damn apartment in his bizarrely eclectic, shiny, dangly, overly-merry, sometimes-musical festive bullshit. If it weren't the very epitome of tasteless, it might just be impressive. 

Any other year, Bartleby would just've camped out in front of the television while Loki decorated, watching reruns of things he didn't particularly enjoy the first time around, doing it just because he's too apathetic to read around the holidays. He'd stare blankly and mutter the occasional sarcastic "bah, humbug"; Loki thinks it's amusingly ironic, mostly because they both remember the year that book was first published and Bartleby bitched at him long and hard until he sat still, or relatively so, long enough for him to read out what he thought were the best parts. Bartleby used to like Dickens for some reason Loki could never exactly discern, was at least somewhat vocally convinced that it said something about human nature as a whole. He hasn't read any in fifteen years or more. Technically that's not exactly an ice age compared to how long they've actually been stuck in fucking Wisconsin, but it's still confusing. Just one of many thoroughly fucking confusing things about this year. 

Usually, the decorations are the only concession he'll make and the rest's just business as normal, as if there's no holiday at all. The disconcerting thing is this year there hasn't even been their usual somewhat animated discussion about putting up a tree, not so much as a fucking peep about the little ornamental wooden mice in Santa hats from the sixties that Bartleby's been glaring at for years like he means them actual physical harm. He didn't actually help but there were no complaints, either - that should've tipped him off, should've been the first sign when he just nodded from behind his book (the latest John Grisham that he was already poking holes in a couple of days later, a book that was apparently standing in for reruns of the X-Files) and told him sure, go ahead, knock yourself out, for fuck's sake don't forget the blinking musical Santa lights. 

It didn't stop there. They get greetings cards from co-workers every year just like the majority of working Americans and it's really the one time of the year that the tables are turned because Loki fucking loves them and Bartleby's resorted to telling everyone he's Buddhist just so they'll leave him the fuck alone and stop bombarding him with poorly-rendered scenes of the Nativity or Rudolph the Red-Nosed fucking Reindeer. This year, however, there've been no lectures on plurality of religion within the United States. He hasn't bitched about commerciality and the brash consumerism of modern society being artificially imposed upon supposedly holy days - he actually has books on the subject that seem to make a miraculous appearance once a year for him to lend to acquaintances, but they've somehow mysteriously remained closeted this time around. And instead, there's a neat line of cards that he accepted without a hint of his requisite bloody-mindedness, all standing on the bookcase. That was the second sign. Loki started to think the Apocalypse was nigh.

Then they both went to the Christmas party at Loki's boss's place, a fairly homely house two blocks over where Loki ended up the last three years running but it's one annual event he'd never managed to persuade Bartleby to go anywhere near. Bartleby brought cookies shaped like Christmas trees that he made himself and he smiled and was perfectly polite, left the advocacy of Zen Buddhism at home, refused the beer (and consequent spitting) and took a Coke instead. He complimented the decorations, watched half of The Santa Clause in the den with the kids and didn't try to tell them the _real_ story of Saint Nicholas the way he usually did, just sort of basked in the bearded glory of Tim Allen and nibbled Cheetos. And Loki just watched, knowing that no one there but him really understood that this just wasn't Bartleby. In fact, it was sort of worrying.

They left sometime after one, walking back to their place through the slushy, melting snow in a silence that Loki wanted to break and ordinarily would've but just inexplicably _didn't_. Now it's Christmas Eve already and he's still thinking about it as he sits at his desk, toying with a huge bunch of keys that make just the right sound to clear his head as they clink together. Bartleby used to drag him to midnight mass on nights like this, did for years though neither of them are exactly Catholic in the strictest sense - they'd sit there in the back pew of whatever church they could find in whatever jerkwater town they'd ended up in that particular year where Bartleby might've sweet-talked his way into a job teaching high school English while Loki works security (it means he gets a gun and a uniform and what amounts to a cushy desk job most nights, though it brings with it a certain requisite level of violence and that suits him right down to the ground). They tell people they're brothers, if and when they ask. They've been together so long it might as well be true, but it isn't. Not really. 

And the only conclusion he's come to tonight is he's not sure it's necessarily a good thing that he knows he's just not smart enough to understand what the fuck's going on.

These days Loki'll pick up the shift on Christmas Eve just to fuck up Bartleby's plans for midnight mass, but this year he's found some college kid in need of the cash to take it instead; he gets off early and gets in at eleven, snow on his shoes and melting on his coat, making his hair damp and dark, expecting to have his ass dragged to church and prepared to commence bitching though he's pretty much _obviously_ expecting it. But Bartleby's just sitting there in the dark watching a marathon of pop Christmas songs on some fucking music channel that actually plays music with surprising irregularity; it's obvious he's going nowhere because apart from the fact that all he's wearing is boxers, socks and a vile green sweater bearing a huge and obnoxious appliqué Rudolph, he's swilling cheap tequila around his mouth that's from Loki's supposedly secret stash and looking thoroughly fucking morose. 

Loki closes the door a little louder than strictly necessary but Bartleby doesn't look at him. He sits there and hums badly through the second half of Fairytale of New York and Loki leans back against the door in the stupidly dark room, watching the light from the television cast blue shadows over Bartleby's face, attempting to block out his off-key humming. He can't make any of this make sense so he just keeps quiet. It seems the thing to do. 

But then Bartleby stands and pads across the room in his too-big sports socks, putting down the tequila and turning off the television with the remote that Loki's given so much wear it's held together with duct tape. He pulls off that fucking tasteless sweater as Loki wonders exactly where the fuck he got it from and he tosses it into his chair, stands there in front of the window in the thin near-dark of the streetlight that filters in from down the street and he's not even looking out because he's ducked his chin, lowered his head. 

He shifts his weight, on the verge of something, and Loki knows what he's going to do before he does it but somehow he's surprised anyway, watches with an odd sort of uncharacteristic silence as Bartleby sighs and spreads his wings; there's an oddly loud rustle of feathers and they almost span the admittedly small room, he thinks, very nearly touch the low ceiling, and it's just so fucking _sad_. He hasn't seen Bartleby's wings in far too fucking long and seeing him like this, here and now in this shabby fucking apartment... Loki really remembers, really _feels_ how they don't belong. They never have, not even that one fucking insane Christmas not so long ago, the one they spent with Azrael, swilling good brandy and watching Home Alone. They never will.

They can't be anywhere but here and they've got no one but each other. _They never will_. Christ, they're so fucking alone.

A pause and then he's almost sheepish though his steps are sure as he moves across the room, as he moves in close and raises his hands, pulls off his gloves and shoves them into his pockets so he can rub at that vulnerable place where wing meets shoulder, the place that should probably make him flinch but doesn't. He can see the small smile reflected in a window pane as Bartleby leans back just a little and Loki steps in, up against his back, his clothed chest against bare skin, this all he can think of to do though he has no idea how it'll be received. It's been too long since they've felt like anything but passing acquaintances. Maybe Loki's an open book, but Bartleby's been closed for years.

"You're cold," Bartleby says at last, not quite a reproach, and he doesn't move away. He doesn't move at all and so Loki just slips his arms around him, not quite awkwardly, in a way he hasn't done in years. He tilts his head and rests it down against one wing, feathers tickling under his chin. 

"Sorry," he says then, and he means it, and he doesn't. 

The problem is that Loki knows, has always known, that he reminds him of exactly what he's lost. He's a constant reminder. And maybe they haven't always been together, not all this time - there've been years when they couldn't fucking stand to be in the same town as one other, let alone the same room - but the years apart really only served to make it clear to Loki that they need to be together, even if Bartleby's coming or has come or will come to resent him. Bartleby wants to forget what they're missing but always remembers; Loki sometimes makes it better and always makes it worse. Sometimes he just wants to slap him upside the head and tell him he knows, he fucking _knows_ , he's lost the same things and it hurts just as damn much and he has to stop allocating all this fucking blame when it's really on both of them. But he doesn't bring it up. It always dims back down in time.

"Next year we'll go check into a fucking pricey hotel," he says as Bartleby draws in his wings, folds them back, "and spend Christmas spitting bourbon and eating too much fucking ice cream."

And he hopes he'll smile but Bartleby just glances at him not quite sadly in the glass. It's resignation more than sadness. "Sure," he says. "Merry Christmas." 

Then Loki understands, smiles back a little tightly, holds on a little tighter. Sense comes in a flash and the signs say they won't be together next Christmas, that he's going to be alone for the first time in seventy-eight years. It's okay, he tells himself; he's not exactly gutted, he'll cope just fine, it's been like this before and they're always together in the end - they always find each other and within three days they'll bitch and moan like they've never been apart. He's not worried, he thinks. They just need some time apart. It doesn’t hurt. They'll meet up in a few years, spend some time harassing clergy in an airport lounge, complain about sports and pointedly _not_ debate morality, if only because they know exactly where it got them last time. At the end of all things, they'll still be there together in fucking Wisconsin.

He knows that, he thinks. He _knows_ it. And so maybe he should pull back, but he holds on tighter anyway.


End file.
